Yelp Redesign

Problem

Yelp is a widely used application by people to find different services, especially to discover new restaurants. However, some users feel discouraged or confused when using the application due to the excessive amount of information and duplication of information on the different interfaces, which hinders the user experience. As user needs change, some of Yelp's features need to be improved to optimize performance and better meet user expectations.

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After the research, I decided to focus on redesigning the business profile, a common concern for both users and business owners. Users use this interface to browse business services and reviews. In contrast, business owners use it to showcase and attract customers.

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How Might We redesign the business profile and make it informative, lightweight and personalized?

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Solution

After card sorting, I analyzed the information customers cared about on the business profile and rearranged them. Pivots and user interface chrome were reduced to make the interface lightweight. I added navigation bars and tabs to make it informative. The content was filtered and personalized according to user preferences and habits.

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Why redesigning Yelp?

As a designer, I like that Yelp will put all the information about the restaurant together. You can view the restaurant, pictures of the restaurant, reviews and descriptions through the map in a very realistic and comprehensive way.

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However, I believe that Yelp's interface design and interaction design could improve further, especially when browsing restaurant information. The presentation of information is too redundant.

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Of course, if I were redesigning the actual product, I would also think about whether the feature is crucial to both its users and the business, with reference to the product's target users and the company's roadmap.

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Research on Yelp says that 94% of consumers claim that positive reviews make them more likely to patronize a business. (BrightLocal, 2021) Moreover, I am one of them who often use Yelp to check out nearby restaurants and services, especially when I am out of my city or arriving in a new place. So apart from me and my circle of friends, who are using this software?

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US Demographics of Yelp Users

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A common problem my friends and I encounter is that we always want to know how the restaurant is generally doing quickly when searching for a restaurant. We enjoy exploring the restaurant's seasonal specials. The selection process can be time-consuming and frustrating because Yelp's current interactions are not convenient and intuitive.

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This gave me my initial thought: what if we could rethink how restaurant information is presented on Yelp to help users find the information they are interested in faster?

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Competitive Analysis

I first looked into the market, trying to find inspirations and gaps among existing products:

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I know that I should not design for myself. I cannot assume that the problem is widespread enough that it is worth the effort to design something to solve it. To quickly understand whether this is a problem worth solving, I decided to check out the online analysis and reviews on the app store and Twitter for yelp.

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Then I drafted a couple of questions and started casually asking people around me about their habits of searching for a new restaurant. I hypothesized that people tend to pay more attention to pictures and reviews and do not like to read long texts.

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My findings validated the hypothesis, and here is the summary of the current problems:

• Long list with limited information hierarchy

• Too much white space

• Poor readability

• Lack of information about seasonal, limited specials

• No way to see reviews based on your interests

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In the course of my research, I realized that in addition to the users, there is another essential target audience: the owner of the business. Their needs are different from the customers, who are more interested in attracting users to their services, getting more positive reviews and thus making a profit.

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Persona

Based on these findings, I summarized the research and created two personas to guide my design process.

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I summarized the higher-level goals I hope to achieve with the redesign according to the user needs and the gaps in existing products. Both types of users consider the business profile important. It is also where they primarily browse, search and fill in the information, so I decided to put this redesign on the business profile.

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Having understood the design goals, I started brainstorming and developing ideas that could help me achieve these goals.

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I realized that they felt the information was redundant because it was difficult for users to find the information they cared about quickly. With this in mind, I categorized the information on the page and found 4 users to rate how much they cared about this information.

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Card Sorting

With this result, I found that people will pay more attention to images and want to browse and extract information more efficiently. Is there a way for users to find information quickly? Is there a way for users to easily collect lists and add their comments? Are there some quick entry points for users to interact within the limited space of a screen?

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Based on these, I drew a few low-fidelity drafts to try out some of my ideas to see if they would work.

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I have many ideas about every detail in the interface and keep figuring out how to do it better. Considering all the different components, I started diving into the details and considering how to link them together to form a meaningful user flow.
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As for the visual design, I kept it consistent with the style of Yelp, following the guidelines of material design.

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High Fidelity Design

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Considerations for Redesign

This was the first time I redesigned an existing product with a large user base and added a new feature to it. This prompted me to think deeply about how the new feature would change the current flow of the app, the interactions, and even the logic behind it.

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I did my best not to disrupt existing features that made sense to users. When they used the app for any other purposes, they may not notice my change in functionality. I made conservative choices about the interactions inside the new features, choosing those that better fit the existing mental model of the user. Please let me know if you have any thoughts around this :D

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Stories vs Presentations

People remember stories more. Consider the audience when presenting, rather than putting all the work directly in front of the audience. Telling a good story may make the whole project more convincing and powerful.

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